i suppose you might be the person who might clarify this for me, redharen, and this question was instigated for me by lechozx making some statement about jews and hollywood and the foregone conclusion/assumption in some minds that because they are jews they are religious or have a belief, faith, or even hold in importance their own God. however, a priest who hails from the chicago area whom i listen to from time to time and strikes me as a real grabowski, yet speaks an incredible number of ancient and current languages and posseses a doctorate in old testament studies and a masters in theology made a statement that i still can't believe i heard correctly, and that is that not only are 85% of new york jews atheists - but 85% of israeli jews are as well - so by extension i can only imagine what the numbers are in hollywood, not that it really makes a difference to me because it seems somewhat obvious. but i must admit i found the statement about israel somewhat shocking.

Nah, I don't think there's any country in the world whose population is composed of 85% atheists. He probably meant to say Israel was 85% secular, which isn't quite accurate, either. Religion permeates Israeli society in all kinds of ways -- 85% of people might say they're secular, but tons of Israeli Jews don't work on the Sabbath; most of them eat kosher; almost none of them work, drive, or spend money on Yom Kippur; 99% of them have mezuzot on their doorposts; and just about all of them salute a flag that looks like a prayer shawl and has a Star of David on it. People have been trying to define how religious Israeli society is for a long time, but most of them don't even accomplish the task of defining what "religious" even means.

I think the depth of religion in Israel shows itself most clearly in the face of massive geopolitical shifts. I mean, look, the dude in the middle doesn't even know he's supposed to put something on his head when he goes to the Western Wall, but there he is anyway. And look at his face. He's as affected as anyone else in that photo.

redharen wrote:I mean, look, the dude in the middle doesn't even know he's supposed to put something on his head when he goes to the Western Wall, but there he is anyway. And look at his face. He's as affected as anyone else in that photo.

.......that's because his head is covered in Glory.

I know the law. And I have spent my entire life in its flagrant disregard.

thanks, redharen, now that you mention it i think the word he used was secular - from an americentric point of view it takes a little more thought to get my head around this concept as it applies to the israelis than i am capable of at the moment - but i'll keep trying.

i imagine with them it's one of those things more effectively attacked from the inside than the outside just like most everything else.

Secular is a term used for people who may or may not be atheists. A lot of people who feel that their spirituality continually changes and evolves will refer to themselves as secular. The type of saps that people like SRR despise.

i think of secular in more of a "render unto caesar" sort of way, i suspect srr is more of an old school sort of rejectionist, which means he'll still consider old thought out shite over nuevo bullshit anyday.

I suppose that is how nowonmai would consider secular to be as well. Whereas the secular sap would be into nuevo bullshit like actually caring about certain television shows,self-help books,yoga,Bono and Coldplay.

Watch,nowonmai will come out of the closet and say he really likes those things....the king of curmudgeon.

"Because we don't know when we will die, we get to think of life as an inexhaustible well, yet everything happens only a certain number of times, and a very small number, really. How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, some afternoon that's so deeply a part of your being that you can't even conceive of your life without it? Perhaps four or five times more, perhaps not even that. How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps twenty. And yet it all seems limitless. " -- Neurosis

Yea it is from a movie but it is also in one of the greatest records ever cut.

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